Although the capacity of existing memory devices (e.g., hard disk drives, flash drives, and the like) have rapidly grown, the demands of consumer, commercial, industrial, and government users continues to keep pace and, in some instances, outpace currently technologies. For example, a 30 gigabyte portable media player that provided more than adequate storage five years ago may now be inadequate to store the ever-increasing catalog of full-length motion pictures available for purchase and download.
In many applications, merely increasing storage capacity by adding additional discs or chips is often not acceptable or desirable, particularly in portable devices.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved memory devices that are capable of storing large amounts of data in small footprint.